In an exclusive to Cointelegraph, 58 high-flyers from the Bitcoin community attending Amsterdam Bitcoin2014, predict where Bitcoin will be on Christmas day 2014. While some experts compared the task to attempting to forecast the weather on Christmas day – the time of year gives us a pretty good indication what the weather will be doing, and the predictions of some of our experts make a lot of sense given the current Bitcoin climate.


While some experts were quietly positive, suggesting that the pricewould be sitting at the US$800 mark – this figure seems conservative given theincrease in Bitcoin over the past week in which it has climbed over 30%. Themajority of experts who were willing to venture a guess thought that Bitcoinwould be worth more than US$1,000, with several experts placing the valuebetween US$2,000 and US$5,000.

Of special interest were predictions by Sam Cole from KnCMiner who said:

“Large financial players areentering the market this year. I am talking to some of them. If they are tobecome involved they need the coin to be valued at around US$2,000 to US$3,000…So I am predicting around US$2,000 to US$3,000.”

Interestingly, Dr. Marco Krohn from Genesis Mining suggested the samefigure of US$2,000 to US$3,000. What is it that miners know that the rest of usdon’t? It seems they are expecting a second Bitcoin rush this year.

This point of view was supported by Bitcoin investor Trace Mayer whobelieves the latest innovations in the cryptocurrency will enable Wall Streetto come into Bitcoin which will push the price up “significantly higher.”

However, while many are placing their bets on an increasingly valuablecoin, members of the Bitcoin Foundation emphasised that for Bitcoin’s long termsuccess, the price is largely irrelevant. Jinyoung Lee Englund from thefoundation observed that:

“It is like an early stagetech-startup, price isn’t a measure of success… What is a measure of success isthe mass consumer and merchant uptake. One of the merchant payment processors,have signed over 26,000 merchants.”

Dotsub’s David Orban believes that the price is going up but also emphasisedthat price wasn’t everything:

“Announcements in the spacewill drive the price up, but rather than concentrating on exchange rates weneed to focus on applications that give value to Bitcoin.”

However, some were more bearish on Bitcoin’s growth. Bobby Lee from BTCChina, who has been hit with uncertainties over regulation in China, offered amuch more modest price, suggesting that it would be over US$500.

In the meantime, be sure to watch Cointelegraph’s exclusive interviewsand decide for yourself who makes the best case and then wait to see whatpresents Bitcoin will bring you this holiday season.

Sponsors are welcome to offer a prize for the best prediction, pleasecontact: drop@cointelegraph.com